First, A Beatle, Now, A Poet

Paul Mccartney Charms A New York Crowd With Readings From His New Book.

May 6, 2001|By Aileen Jacobson, Newsday

NEW YORK -- Not one of his "millions" of Liverpool relatives ("In fact, they're breeding as we speak") would dream of calling him Sir Paul, the knighted ex-Beatle said the other evening on the stage of Manhattan's 92nd Street Y.

Indeed, it's hard to imagine anyone calling the 58-year-old Sir Paul McCartney by any stiff-sounding title (though many an admiring "still cute" was heard from the largely baby boomer audience). Not after the charming, charismatic reading of poems and lyrics that he gave from his new book, Blackbird Singing. And especially not after he ended the spellbinding first half-hour of a rare public appearance with a rousing audience-participation version of his immortal "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"

"This is a man who has never lost his sense of self. He has not isolated himself in a cloud," said Bob Weil, the executive editor who worked with McCartney on the new collection and was impressed both by the wisdom displayed in the work and by the agonizing McCartney did over "a word choice, the placement of a stanza, the order of the poems. This is a man who doesn't delegate, doesn't leave it to a staff. If he's going to be a writer, he's going to do it personally."

Still, McCartney is not your average struggling artist. Following a year of hibernation after the death of his wife, Linda, in 1998 (during which he did "a lot of crying. . . . It was cleansing," he said), he has bloomed into an iconic presence in an astonishing number of fields, from writing to painting to charity work to television to, of course, music. And he always goes first class.

For the poetry book, he chose the venerable publishing house of W.W. Norton.

For his only American reading, he selected the 92nd Street Y's walnut-paneled hall (drawing 1,200 listeners, with two satellite rooms added), where he follows such literary luminaries as Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney (and Steve Martin, the previous ticket-selling champion).

As for his painting, gathered in a handsome volume last year titled Paul McCartney Paintings, he felt he was able to start doing it regularly after a conversation with his friend Willem de Kooning.

When the great abstract expressionist gave McCartney a small painting 20 years ago, McCartney asked him what it was. "I don't know, it looks like a couch," de Kooning casually answered. And "boom," thought McCartney, illustrating the moment with hands moving to strike his temples: "I can paint! I can paint!" (This was during the second part of the Y evening, when McCartney was interviewed by Charlie Rose, who will feature the encounter on his PBS show on a date to be scheduled.)

A few days before the Tuesday night interview, McCartney attended a New York benefit for Adopt-a-Minefield, where he and his girlfriend, Heather Mills, were honored for their work with the charity, which provides limbs for victims. Mills, 33, lost a leg in a motorcycle accident. McCartney and Mills will be chairmen at a Los Angeles fund-raiser for the charity on June 14. Last Monday, McCartney attended a gala given by the literary association PEN to raise money for writers who are in political peril.

Shortly after the September release of his art volume, Chronicle Books came out with The Beatles Anthology, a tome of reminiscences to which McCartney contributed. And now McCartney has delivered to ABC a two-hour documentary about his post-Beatles band Wings, to air at 9 p.m. Friday, three days after an album of the same title, Wingspan, is released. He has also recorded new songs to be released this fall.

In the documentary, McCartney is interviewed by one of his daughters, Mary, whose husband, Alistair Donald, directs.

Here is a paradox in the life of the humble Paul McCartney: He has the clout to have near-total control over his work, and how it is presented. "When you're dealing with Paul McCartney, you do things his way, and then you say thank you," said a publicist involved in getting one of the few interviews he's granting.

On the other hand, McCartney reveals his feelings for family, friends and the vulnerability of loss with such heartfelt caring that he immediately captures one's good will.

Along with the famous lyrics ("Yesterday," "Hey Jude," "The Fool on the Hill," none of which can be read without a soundtrack in one's head), the poems about the loss of Linda, who died of breast cancer, are the book's best works. He displayed emotion as he read a few of them (while his current love, Mills, in the audience, revealed nothing). He said of Linda, "She freed me to do interesting things. . . . She was a liberating woman."

But McCartney pooh-poohs the appellation Renaissance man (suggested by Rose and in a TV Guide interview). "I have a passion for things," he said. He recalled a recent encounter with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who once guided the Beatles. Asked for advice, the "spry old codger" had one word: "Enjoy." And that's what Paul McCartney says he plans to do.